India, China complement global economy: Ohmae

Any discussion on the future of India is incomplete without a mention of China. At the seminar on 'Future is India "" Globalisation and Wealth Creation' organised by Confederation of Indian Industry and held in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore, discussions veered towards weakness of China.

It was Kenichi Ohmae, a management consultant popularly known as 'Mr Strategist' worldwide, who first threw his hat into the ring. "The Chinese are good in mass production but not in a complex operation," he said.

Ohmae added that India and China are not directly competing with each other but are complementary to the rest of the world.

Earlier in the day, Sam Pitroda, chairman of Knowledge Commission, Government of India, pointed out that to survive in a globalising world it is necessary for innovation to happen faster. He stressed value creation to be critical to a company's survival.

Chris Callen, CEO of DHL, said the enablers to globalisation and value creation have a global perspective and innovation, and are recognising small and medium enterprises as the future of trade.

Ohmae laid stress on the importance of the senior management in an organisation to be well acquainted with all the aspects of the business.

"We have to realise that an organisation is no longer of a pyramid shape, but it's flat-structured," he said. It is important to pay enough attention to the human talent within the organisation, a fact echoed by Guruji Sri Sri Ravishankar, founder of Art of Living.

It is also equally important to focus attention to the rule of intangible assets in a developing country like India. David Haigh, CEO of Brand Finance, the UK, pointed out that 76 per cent of the value in the Indian stock market is made up of intangible assets compared with 62 per cent across the top 25 markets globally. A large part of this could be attributed to information technology companies.

David Norton, co-founder of Balanced Scorecard concept, explained the reason why so many companies have failed.

He said even though all of them had a strategy, almost none had a method of measuring it. "Organisations do not manage strategy. What they need is someone responsible for the execution of the strategy as well," he said.